Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for her amendments. She has just spoken about a whole set of amendments that relate to both the Environment Protection Australia legislation and the transitional amendments legislation, if I understand her correctly. I will make a few comments in response.

As I say, I'm very grateful to the member for North Sydney for moving her amendments. I thank her for her longstanding and constructive engagement with me and my office. I know she is absolutely steadfast in her commitment to build public trust in our environmental regulations and has been a very effective advocate for the people of North Sydney. The government won't be supporting these amendments, however, but I completely understand the member's intent in moving the amendments.

Given the public confidence that our environmental laws are being upheld is just one of the reasons I'm trying to set up Australia's first national independent environment protection agency. Environment Protection Australia is designed to be a tough cop on the beat, with enforcement and compliance powers to ensure our laws are being upheld. The EPA will have oversight and enforcement powers to crack down on those breaching our laws or failing to comply with the conditions of their approval. The EPA will be empowered to issue environment protection orders. These are stop-work orders where they believe there may be noncompliance. There will also be very substantial fines for breaches.

When it comes to the objects of the act that some of the other amendments go to, it is important to draw the distinction between the objects of the legislation which administers the EPA and the objects of the acts which the EPA will regulate. The EPA will be responsible for regulating nine other pieces of legislation. We cannot support the member's amendments because the scope of the bill is about establishing the EPA with the environmental objectives resting in the regulated acts like the EPBC Act, the ozone protection act or the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act. Each of those acts has its own objects. We don't believe the agency which administers these acts with their own objectives should have an additional layer of objectives beyond those already included. These already achieve what the member is looking to do, which is to promote public trust in decision-making.

The object of the EPA bill is:

… to establish Environment Protection Australia to support the delivery of accountable, efficient, outcomes-focused and transparent environmental regulatory decision-making.

Again, I thank the member for moving this amendment and acknowledge her dedication to her community.

On the issues relating to extending the public-comment period to 40 business days, which the member has also alluded to: I particularly agree with her that it is important that the public has enough time to properly engage in consultation processes on environmental matters that affect them. That's why one of the national environmental standards I'm currently consulting on will be a specific standard addressing community consultation and engagement. One of the main objectives will be to make sure that communities are properly consulted, and consulted early, so they have genuine opportunity to influence the location and the design of projects. I look forward to continuing to discuss this with the member for North Sydney. It's crucial the public get the information they need in the time they need, but I won't be supporting this amendment because the amendment is so very broad.

The proposal to change the timeframes including for things like wildlife permits, proclamations, management plans and environmental assessments would lead to some perverse outcomes. For example, the risk of extending all these to 40 days would have had a consequence in one example that has been on my desk recently: there was a captive-bred cheetah called Edie being returned to the wild in Africa. If we hadn't been able to quickly tick off on the export permit for that, Edie would have missed her spot on the Qantas jet that had been booked to take her to where she was being released into the wild. I want to avoid any unintended consequences.

I will finalise my comments on this by saying that, with the publishing of advice of the advisory group, the CEO already may publish the advice from the advisory group. I think that strikes a balance between allowing—

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